Practical Architecture
Practical Architecture
 

Practical Architecture

 
 

Exploring how people become good at creating good buildings.

 
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Much of what makes us good at professional practice isn’t learned through formal education or technical training.

It’s developed through experience: by working with others, making decisions, getting things wrong, reflecting on what happened and trying again.

That’s what Practical Architecture explores.

 

Featured articles

Blog
Learning to Build
Learning to Build

How experience becomes judgement

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Technical design gives me brain ache
Technical design gives me brain ache

How can the brain ache be reduced?

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Me then and me now
Me then and me now

Improving as a designer after architecture school

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Do Something Beautiful
Do Something Beautiful

The struggle is always worth it

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“The subject of Practical Architecture isn’t buildings.

It’s how people become good at creating them.”
 

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Sketching A sketch isn’t only a way of communicating an idea. Sometimes you draw because you don’t yet quite understand what you’re looking at. Trying to put something on paper makes you decide what matters - its proportion, its
Reflection Experience doesn’t automatically produce expertise. You can do something many times without necessarily getting much better at it. Something has to happen between having an experience and learning from it. We have to notice what
Being stuck I think being stuck is a good place to be. With the right frame of mind, there’s a good chance you’re about to learn something. Often, the helpful response is to slow down, observe, think, and stay open to new possibilities
Changing your mind Good judgement doesn’t mean getting it right first time. Sometimes it means recognising that your initial answer was wrong, or that it could be improved. We can become attached to an idea simply because it was ours: defend
Watching Others A surprising amount of learning at work happens without anybody teaching us. Instead, it happens by watching more experienced people in action: - Seeing how someone approaches a problem. - Listening to the questions they ask in a
Making mistakes We learn from our mistakes - or at least that’s what we’re told. But I’m not sure it’s always true. It certainly isn’t automatic. It’s quite possible to get something wrong, correct it and move o